


a hunter-gatherer's guide to regaining ownership of oneself

by Ori_Cat



Category: Chronicles of Ancient Darkness - Michelle Paver
Genre: Cults, Gen, Healer Trash Party, Nightmares, Self-Harm, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-06 19:22:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16838842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ori_Cat/pseuds/Ori_Cat
Summary: happy cultiversary, hati.





	a hunter-gatherer's guide to regaining ownership of oneself

**one.** the first one was the worst. someone had wound rawhide around and between his ribs, let it shrink to the hardness of stone, because he couldn’t breathe. it hurt even to try. 

couldn’t. couldn’t eat or drink or stand - he spent the entire day curled animal-like inside the darkness of the shelter, trying to remind himself how to get air. 

  
  
  


**two.** no: the second one was the worst. because the first he had been alone, but now he had to lie. now he wasn’t allowed to be broken and afraid and he wasn’t allowed to curl up into a despairing ball and wait for it to be over again - 

because now he had his child to look after, this tiny perfect human fawn, the one he had _made,_ and it was all on him, it was wrong, morally wrong, to pass on sorrow - 

maybe he couldn’t have fooled anyone else, but he made it, through a day that seemed to last a thousand years, and 

(he wept, bitterly, after his son slept, and beat one fist on the other wrist until it bruised in a bid to distract himself from everything haunted, everything he hadn’t broken down.) 

  
  
  


**three.** there was no sunlight. well, there was, he supposed, if one wanted to be technical about it - but all it did was illuminate the world. all it did was show the sun was there - it didn’t touch him at all. didn’t shine. 

oh, he was so so cold, and there was no way to get warm again. 

  
  
  


**four.** blood everywhere. bones everywhere. human and animal and he can’t tell which is which, everything the stink of ash and entrail and meat. there are more at his feet than anywhere else, and he can’t remember how they got there but there is nowhere to run, no way away from all the death - 

“fa?” 

it took a bewildering few seconds to clear the stench from his mind. “what?” 

“are you awake?” 

he hoped so, he really hoped so, and he wanted to stay that way forever. “i am now.” 

“is everything all right?” 

“yes,” he said. “go back to sleep,” he said. “everything’s all right.” _no it’s not no it’s not no -_

  
  
  


**five.** _what are you so afraid of?!_ he wanted to scream at himself, having spent the entire day drowning in terror like in the shallow edge of the ocean. 

and then he forbade himself to answer, because he was equally terrified of knowing. 

(it was the roots, the ones that remained like white fungal hyphae, still stuck in the corners of his mind. woven deeply enough he couldn’t tell what was him and what wasn’t, and whether in the end it mattered.) 

  
  
  


**six.** the sixth was the first he didn’t notice. at least, not until the end of the day, not until the shelter was built and the thin silver fish were hanging by their jaws over the pit of coals, and he watched the smoke swirl up around their bodies. and he realized with a sudden jolt that yes, this was the day, an exact count of summers since - 

the fish tasted like ash, but. the sorrow stayed away, stalking at the edges of the firelight. it didn’t set a foot in, that night. 

  
  
  


**seven.** the leaves of the maples had been just this same shade of green, then, too. maybe that colour was always going to ache some. 

(it wasn’t their fault, though. trees never cared about the doings of men.) 

  
  
  


**eight.** it takes very little to tear things open again, though. so little. a few words. a few faces. a few people. always people, and lies, more lies upon more lies, isolation upon isolation - 

_remember you deserve this,_ he told himself. _you deserve -_

they never went back. he didn’t think he could have borne it a second time. 

  
  
  


**nine.** really, it shouldn’t have been in the moon of roaring stags. it should have been midwinter, he thought; that would have been more appropriate a date. the darkest night, the coldest moon, a day of death and ghosts. the warm green-red-orange of the autumn wasn’t really right for grief, somehow. 

(but even before, he had loved midwinter. midwinter was the day of light’s return, a promise that no winter could last forever. spring would come again, and so would summer. midwinter was redemption day, both for him and for the world, and so he could not hate midwinter.) 

(the twenty-fifth day in the moon of roaring stags had nothing similar to mark it, other than his sin. maybe that was why.) 

  
  
  


**ten.** that’s the thing about time, though. it passes whether you want it to or not. 

  
  
  


**eleven.** and spring always comes again. and so does summer. 

  
  
  


**twelve.** he tried it, once. leaning back against a tree in a honey-and-purple dusk, torak scrounging for more kindling several paces off. whispered to himself _it’s going to be okay._

and almost, he could believe it. 

  
  
  


**thirteen.** the first time, his brother had held his hand. his ribs had been slick with blood and the edges of his mind buzzing with that strange pain-high and tenris had clasped his hand and hauled him to his feet and embraced him, and the world had been green-orange-red and so so bright and new. 

this time, his ribs are slick with blood and his brother takes his hand again and makes him lie down again in dark cold earth. 

  
  
  


**fourteen.**

  
  
  


**fifteen.**

  
  
  


**sixteen.** when his inlaws had continued giving him sideways looks, continued tightening their grips on their children’s arms seeing him, this was the vow he had made before them: _i will die before i will go back._

…it hadn’t been a lie.


End file.
